Unformatted Document Text:
discovery, Newsweek quoted a psychiatrist who interpreted plagiarism as “a desperate
attempt to salvage self-esteem”
9
Thomas Mallon, who wrote about literary plagiarism in
Stolen Words,
10
said, “You cannot escape the conclusion there’s a psychological element
to it.”
11
Neal Bowers, who wrote a book about his search for the person plagiarizing his
poetry, observed, “But what plagiarist is entirely mentally healthy?”
12
Although the psychology hypothesis has been often stated, it has never been
tested, perhaps because journalistic plagiarism is rarely seen as an ethical issue worth
much study. A 2011 media ethics textbook declared that serious plagiarism cases such as
Jayson Blair are “so egregious that some media ethicists don’t find them philosophically
interesting.”
13
In its 26-year history, the Journal of Mass Media Ethics has published only
one article focused on plagiarism, an essay by an undergraduate student that won the
1989 Carol Burnett prize.
14
Plagiarism is so widely condemned that a researcher
measuring whether being prompted to think about death would affect the ethical position
of journalism students threw out a question about plagiarism because almost every
respondent scored it as unacceptable.
15
Professionals don’t give it much more attention,
either; the ethics code of the Society of Professional Journalists dismisses the offense in
two words: “Never plagiarize.”
16
Yet as the Washington Post ombudsman noted in
writing about a Pulitzer-Prize winner who inexplicably plagiarized, the offense matters
because it undermines public confidence in journalism.
17
Therefore, exploring the psychology of plagiarism can fill a gap in the academic
literature and be useful to professionals. This study will begin with a well-regarded
measure of personality to search for differences between those who admit to plagiarism
and those who do not. Because professional journalism plagiarism is relatively rare – an